John McCain = asshole; Donald Rumsfeld = idiot

When I look at the metrics for this site, the who, what, and where my hits come from, one thing stands out above all others—the top two googled phrases that lead to my site are these: “John McCain is an asshole” and “Donald Rumsfeld is an idiot.”

Really. Far and away. Hardly a day goes by when I don’t see that someone found me by googling McCain’s asshole-dom or Rumsfeld’s idiocy. It cracks me up, but it also makes me feel like there is something in the zeitgeist—something that McCain, anyway, is going to have to work against in his run for asshole-in-chief.

But when googlers google, they don’t always get every reference on this blog. So, as a public service, let me aggregate some of the past examples.

First: John McCain, asshole.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

And second, Donald Rumsfeld, idiot.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Now, since President Bush lied and played politics with the firing of Don of the Dead, we won’t have the Secretary of Fiasco to kick around anymore—but we still have that asshole John McCain.

In the span of one interview on Meet the Press, McCain managed to admit that he was completely wrong when he predicted a year ago that things would be substantially better in Iraq today, and then he used his newly-minted, straight-talking “credibility” to make a new prediction:

The question is, is what’s the solution? And I believe that a withdrawal or a date for withdrawal will lead to chaos in the region, and most military experts think the same thing. I believe that there are a lot of things that we can do to salvage this, but they all require the presence of additional troops.

I don’t know about which military “experts” McCain is talking to—most I’ve seen put it in writing advocate withdrawal, some slowly, some quickly—but one thing is for sure, he’s not talking to the American people. Only 8% of Americans advocate increasing the number of troops in Iraq. (Maybe the “straight talk express” should do a little less talking and a little more listening.)

And, since we won’t have Rumsfeld to act the idiot for us anymore, let us all thank our lucky stars that Joe Lieberman was able to convince enough Connecticut voters that he was for, as his TV ads said, bringing our troops home.

Appearing on the same Meet the Press as America’s foremost asshole, Backstabber Joe made sure to let us all know he is both a monumental idiot and a sanctimonious asshole, first by arguing that Tuesday’s election was not a big victory for his purported party:

The fact is that this was not a major realignment election in my opinion. This was the voters in Connecticut and elsewhere saying we are disappointed with the Republicans. We want to give the Democrats a chance. But I believe that the American people are considering both major political parties to be in a kind of probation because they’re understandably angry that Washington is dominated too much by partisan political games and not enough by problem solving and patriotism.

And then by mimicking McCain (and reneging on his campaign “promise”):

RUSSERT: Should we send more troops?

LIEBERMAN: I think we have to be open to that as a way to succeed, to achieve a free and independent Iraq, which would be an extraordinary accomplishment.

Extraordinary, indeed. . . some might even say impossible. . . but what do you say we all let McCain and Lieberman give it a try with the lives of thousands more Americans? After all, Americans are fed up with political games, right Joe? They want the kind of patriotism that can only be demonstrated with someone else’s blood.

I apologize for the scattershot nature of this, but I have to add: Did I not warn that one of the consequences of a Lieberman victory would be having to suffer through his regular self-promoting Sunday morning appearances? Sure enough, the touch-screens are barely cold from Tuesday, and Russert is back talking to the same two pretend mavericks we’ve had to endure for the last two, four, six years.

What will it take to get some of our new and/or true progressive Democrats on one of these shows? Well, let’s start by repeating this: Joe Lieberman is an idiot; Joe Lieberman is an asshole.